Newspaper style was the last of all the styles of written literary English to be recognized as a specific form of writing standing apart from other forms.
English newspaper writing dates from the 17th century. At the close of the 16th century short news pamphlets began to appear. Any such publication either presented news from only one source or dealt with one specific subject. Note the titles of some of the earliest news pamphlets: "Newe newes, containing a short rehearsal of Stukely's and Morice's Rebellion" (1579), "Newes from Spain and Holland" (1593), "Wonderful
and strange newes out of Suffolke and Essex, where it rayned wheat the space of six or seven miles" (1583). News pamphlets appeared only from time to time and cannot be classed as newspapers, though they were unquestionably the immediate forerunners of the British press.
The first of any regular series of English newspapers was the Weekly News which first appeared on May 23, 1622. It lasted for some twenty years till in 1641 it ceased publication. The 17th century saw the rise of a number of other news sheets which, with varying success, struggled on in the teeth of discouragement and restrictions imposed by the Crown. With the introduction of a strict licensing system many such sheets were suppressed, and the Government, in its turn, set before the, public a paper of its own – The London Gazette, first published on February 5, 1666. The paper was a semi-weekly and carried official information, royal decrees, news from abroad, and advertisements.
The first English daily newspaper – the Daily Courant – was brought out on March 11, 1702. The paper carried news, largely foreign, and no comment, the latter being against the principles of the publisher, as was stated in the first issue of his paper. Thus the early English newspaper was principally a vehicle of information. Commentary as a regular feature found its way into the newspapers later. But as far back as the middle of the 18th century the British newspaper was very much like what it is today, carrying on its pages news, both foreign and domestic, advertisements, announcements and articles containing comments.
The rise of the American newspaper, which was brought onto American soil by British settlers, dates back to the late 17th, early 18th centuries.
It took the English newspaper more than a century to establish a style and a standard of its own. And it is only by the 19th century that newspaper English may be said to have developed into a system of language media, forming a separate functional style.
The specific conditions of newspaper publication, the restrictions of time and space, have left an indelible mark on newspaper English. For more than a century writers and linguists have been vigorously attacking "the slipshod construction and the vulgar vocabulary" of newspaper English. The very term newspaper English carried a shade of disparagement. Yet, for all the defects of newspaper English, serious though they may be, this form of the English literary language cannot be reduced – as some purists have claimed – merely to careless slovenly writing or to a distorted literary English. This is one of the forms of the English literary language characterized – as any other style – by a definite communicative aim and its own system of language means.
Not all the printed matter found in newspapers comes under newspaper style. The modern newspaper carries material of an extremely diverse character. On the pages of a newspaper one finds not only news and comment on it, press reports and articles, advertisements and announcements, but also stories and poems, crossword puzzles, chess problems and the like. Since the latter serve the purpose of entertaining the reader, they cannot be considered specimens of newspaper style. It is newspaper
printed matter that performs the function of informing the reader and providing him with an evaluation of the information published that can be regarded as belonging to newspaper style.
Thus English newspaper style may be defined as a system of interrelated lexical, phraseological and grammatical means which is perceived by the community as a separate linguistic unity that serves the purpose of informing and instructing the reader.
Information and evaluation co-exist in the modern English newspaper, and it is only in terms of diachrony that the function of information can claim priority. In fact, all kinds of newspaper writing are to a greater or lesser degree both informative and evaluative. But, of course, it is obvious that in most of the basic newspaper "genres" one of the two functions prevails; thus, for example, news of all kinds is essentially informative, whereas the editorial is basically evaluative.
Information in the English newspaper is conveyed, in the first place, through the medium of:
1) brief news items,
2) press reports (parliamentary, of court proceedings, etc.),
3) articles purely informational in character,
4) advertisements and announcements.
The newspaper also seeks to influence public opinion on political and other matters. Elements of appraisal may be observed in the very selection and way of presentation of news, in the use of specific vocabulary, such as attege and claim, casting some doubt on the facts reported, and syntactic constructions indicating a lack of assurance on the part of the reporter as to the correctness of the facts reported or his desire to avoid responsibility (for example, 'Mr. X was said to have opposed the proposal'; 'Mr. X was quoted as saying...'). The headlines of news items, apart from giving information about the subject-matter, also carry a considerable amount of appraisal (the size and arrangement of the headline, the use of emotionally coloured words and elements of emotive syntax), thus indicating the interpretation of the facts in the news item that follows. But, of course, the principal vehicle of interpretation and appraisal is the newspaper article, and the editorial in particular. Editorials (leading articles or leaders) are characterized by a subjective handling of facts, political or otherwise. They have much in common with classical specimens of publicistic writing and are often looked upon as such. However, newspaper evaluative writing unmistakably bears the stamp of newspaper style. Thus, it seems natural to regard newspaper articles, editorials included, as coming within the system of English newspaper style. But it should be noted that while editorials and other articles in opinion columns are predominantly evaluative, newspaper feature articles, as a rule, carry a considerable amount of information, and the ratio of the informative and the evaluative varies substantially from article to article.
To understand the language peculiarities of English newspaper style it will be sufficient to analyse the following basic newspaper features:
1) brief news items,
2) advertisements and announcements,
3) the headline,
4) the editorial.
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